Synchronization services exist today that allows users to synchronize content items stored on their personal computing devices with content items stored on computing systems managed by the services. An example of such a synchronization service is the Dropbox service provided Dropbox, Inc. of San Francisco, Calif.
Typically, synchronization services implement an asynchronous, eventually consistent, or optimistic data replication scheme that allows users to make changes to content items stored at their personal computing device without having to immediately synchronize the changes with the services. For example, this allows a user to make changes to locally stored content items in an offline environment without network connectivity to the service. Because of this at any given time there may be content items stored on the users' personal computing devices that are not synchronized with content items stored on the synchronization service's computers.
Generally, an unsynchronized content item is a new content item or a new version of a content item stored at a user's personal computing device that the synchronization service has not yet stored a copy of. This could be because the new content item or the change resulting in the new version has not yet been communicated to the service or the service has not yet completed storing a copy of the new content item on its systems or not yet completed application of the change to the existing copy of the content item stored on its systems. In contrast, a synchronized content item is a content item stored at a user's personal computing device for which the service has a copy of. Because of the data replication schemes used by many synchronization services, there may be at any time a mix of synchronized and unsynchronized content items stored at a user's personal computing device.
The approaches described in this section are approaches that could be pursued, but not necessarily approaches that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated, it should not be assumed that any of the approaches described in this section qualify as prior art merely by virtue of their inclusion in this section.